IPS Blog

When John Keegan died on August 2, 2012, it escaped me — I’m embarrassed to admit that I was unaware of his existence. Keegan, a lecturer in military history of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and later military affairs editor at the Telegraph, wrote influential books on military history designed to appeal to the public, as well as historians. An obituary in the Washington Post spoke of Keegan, “whose groundbreaking book “The Face of Battle” cast a fresh look at warfare, capturing the fears, anxiety and heroism of the front-line soldier.”

In a 1994 interview with Brian Lamb on C-Span, he speculated on his popularity in the United States.

I think Americans like — they like the practical; they like the human. And I like both those things myself, and I try and put them into my books. I like to try and pick problems to pieces in a practical way and also pick them to pieces in a human way. eals to American readers.

This was exactly the approach Keegan took in The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme (Viking, first edition 1976), which I just finished reading. He quickly dispenses with the military command’s planning to focus on both the soldier’s experience on the battlefield and the details — such as equipment and positioning — which may play an even larger role in determining victory than the overarching strategy.

It’s as if Keegan transports readers to the battlefield in a helicopter where they can hover and observe in detail the myriad linchpins on which the outcome of the battle turns. I fail, however, to do him justice. An excerpt might help.

For example, at Agincourt in 1415 during the Hundred Years War, the French forces vastly outnumbered the British. But that advantage worked against them. Why? The “enormous press of the numbers,” Keegan writes. At a critical point, the French (emphasis added)

… numbering some 5,000 in all, those in the base a shapeless and unordered mass amounting to, perhaps, another 3,000 — and all of them, except for the seven or eight hundred in the leading ranks, unable to see or hear what was happening, yet certain that the English were done for [because they were outnumbered — RW], and anxious to take a hand in finishing them off.

Worse …

No one … had overall authority in this press [the operative word here — RW], nor a chain of command through which to impose it. The consequence was inevitable: the development of an unrelenting pressure from the rear on the backs of those in the line of battle, driving them steadily into the weapon-strokes of the English, or at least denying them that margin of room for individual manoeuvre which is essential if men are to defend themselves — or attack — effectively. This was disastrous, for it is vital to recognize, if we are to understand Agincourt, that all infantry actions, even those fought in the closest of close order, are not, in the last resort, combats of mass against mass, but the sum of many combats of individuals — one against one, one against two, three against five. … At Agincourt, where the man-at-arms bore lance, sword, dagger, mace or battleaxe, his ability to kill or wound was restricted to the circle centred on his own body, within which his reach allowed him to club, slash or stab. Prevented by the throng at their backs from dodging, side-stepping or retreating from the blows and thrusts directed at them by their English opponents, the individual French men-at-arms must shortly have begun to lose their man-to-man fights, collecting blows on the head or limbs which, even through armour, were sufficiently bruising or stunning to make them drop their weapons or lose their balance or footing. Within minutes, perhaps seconds, of hand-to-hand fighting being joined, some of them would have fallen their bodies lying at the feet of their comrades, further impeding the movement of individuals and thus offering an obstacle to the advance of the whole column.

In the C-Span interview, Lamb posed a provocative question to Keegan.

LAMB: Are you a pacifist?

KEEGAN: Ninety five percent.

LAMB: What’s the 5 percent?

KEEGAN: There are certain wicked people in the world that you can’t deal with except by force.

LAMB: That 5 percent, then, allows what?

KEEGAN: It allows the use of extreme force in a measured way — if possible, in a measured way in order to curtail or extinguish the activities of these wicked men we’re talking about.

His definition of pacifism grew even broader.

KEEGAN: … I will never oppose the Vietnam War. I thought that the Americans were right to do it. I think they fought it in the wrong way, but I think that they were right to oppose the attempts by Ho Chi Minh and Giap to make the whole of Vietnam into a Marxist society.

LAMB: Let me go back to your thing about being a pacifist. Is that your 5 percent coming out?

KEEGAN: Yes. I wouldn’t have felt it was the end of the world if the Vietnam War hadn’t been fought. It’s not that kind of war. I don’t think it’s a war like fighting Hitler, but I think it was a correct war, a right war, and it had indirect effects of the greatest importance as well.…

LAMB: Does that make you a conservative?

KEEGAN: I did vote conservative in the last two or three elections. …

LAMB: With American conservatives hearing you say, “How could he be a pacifist, almost, and be a conservative at the same time?”

KEEGAN: No difficulty at all. Even a pacifist, I think, should admire the military virtues. And, indeed, the best pacifists have those virtues themselves: self abdication and willingness, if necessary, to sacrifice their lives for what they believe. … I would say a soldier has mortgaged his life. He said, “Here is my life, and I can only have it back again when the end of my service comes and I salute for the last time and take my pension.” I think a pacifist is the same, except, perhaps, his willingness to sacrifice his life never goes.

Whichever the case, Keegan was concerned with how the risk to troops increased in rough proportion to how technological the military was becoming. He was also troubled by the gap between how civilized peacetime society — we’ll put aside mass murder in the United States for the moment! — has become compared to war’s increasing lethality (the ability of military medicine to snatch soldiers from the jaws of death notwithstanding). From The Face of Battle again:

The modern Western state accepts the responsibility not merely to protect the individual’s life and property, traditionally the legal minima, but to educate and heal him, support him in old age and when unemployed, and increasingly to guarantee his prosperity. [Remember: This is 1976. — RW] Might the modern conscript [again, remember that this is 1976] not well think, at first acquaintance with the weapons the state foists on him, that its humanitarian code is evidence either of a nauseating hypocrisy or of a psychotic inability to connect actions with their results?

A final note on Keegan: he was a literary stylist of the first order. Next, I’ll read The Second World War (Viking Press, 1990) and report back.

President Obama said during his State of the Union address that he would focus on things he could do alone — without having to depend on a badly divided, partisan Congress. And the powerful imagery he summoned in support of voting rights — real, implementable voting rights, based on the example of a 102-year-old voting rights hero, could and should indeed be a critical focus of executive energy. His story of Desiline Victor waiting six hours to vote in North Miami even brought members of Congress — at least some of them — to their feet in a powerful ovation.

But Obama didn’t seem to include in the list of “things he could do alone” the solo, individual decisions that are fundamental to the role of commander in chief. And that role could include, without Congress having to have any role in it, bringing home all the troops from the failed war in Afghanistan. Ending it. Totally. Quickly.

Bringing home half the troops this year reflects the pressure of massive public opposition to the war — but it’s far from enough. All 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan should be pulled out by the middle of this year. And that role of the president, without Congress, could include announcing that the “winding down” of the U.S. war in Afghanistan won’t be transformed into an expanding drone war waged in shadows across the world.

When Obama claims that budget cuts “would jeopardize our military readiness,” he is signaling a rejection of what his own nominee for Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, acknowledged is the need to cut the “bloated” military budget.

And crucially, when we look at areas in which the President can make executive decisions, independent of the whims of a paralyzed, partisan congress, is there any clearer example than the Obama administration’s strategy of targeting and killing “terror suspects,” along with unknown numbers of civilian “collateral damage” in Obama’s Global War on Terror 2.0?

We heard a claim about those drone assassinations during his address, that “we have kept Congress fully informed of our efforts.”

There’s no way that would fly, given recent revelations of the administration’s efforts to claim a legal right to murder anyone, U.S. citizen or not, who they “believe” may be guilty of something they identify as a terrorist attack. So Obama went on. “I recognize that in our democracy, no one should just take my word that we’re doing things the right way. So, in the months ahead, I will continue to engage with Congress to ensure not only that our targeting, detention, and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances, but that our efforts are even more transparent to the American people and to the world.”

What about the KILLING of the people he calls terrorists, beyond detention and prosecution? The reference to checks and balances referred back to the Justice Department’s claim that “due process” didn’t necessarily mean anything having to do with courts and judges, the claim that a decision by a “decision-maker” — not even necessarily the president — was enough to qualify as due process sufficient to take someone’s life, way beyond taking their liberty and their pursuit of happiness.

Focusing on the executive actions you can take without Congress is a great idea, Mr. President. But not unless that focus includes reversing the individually taken military actions that brought such disgrace on your administration’s first term.

Phyllis Bennis is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. Her books include Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN. www.ips-dc.org

In the last year, climate change has come home to the United States in a visceral way. During his State of the Union address, Obama should lay out bold plans for the transition to an ecologically sane economy that reduces inequality.

Images of waves crashing into the Statue of Liberty, wildfires engulfing homes in Colorado, and flood water shutting down the Louisiana interstate have rocked the American psyche over the past twelve months.

For me, 2012 meant living through record-breaking heat waves that buckled metro tracks and derailed commuter trains in my adopted home of Washington, DC. Sadly it also meant saying good-bye to the beach on the Jersey shore where my brother and I played as kids.

Since Obama committed the United States to responding to climate change in his inaugural address, saying that a “the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations,” American families in the Southeast were hit by severe tornados and in the Northeast by crippling snowstorms.

Of course, dealing with climate change in our country is about more than bad weather. We’ve heard about how battered infrastructure and closed businesses strain on national and local coffers. We hear less about how climate change exacerbates inequality — disproportionately impacting the lives and livelihoods of people living in poverty and low-income communities.

A shot at a better life for everyone has to entail a shift away from an “all of the above” energy plan that includes sources that poison people, pollute the environment, and lock us into decades of pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The expansion of fossil fuels and the increasingly extreme ways of getting at it — through fracking, deepwater drilling and blasting the tops off mountains — has got to go the way of the dinosaurs.

Obama said that “the path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult” — no less because the fossil fuel industry and the members of Congress to whom they contribute continue to undermine legislative action on climate. But the transition to shared prosperity and a vibrant clean economy can be made easier with sustained leadership from the president and his administration.

Here are a few actions Obama can take without Congress that he can highlight in tonight’s State of the Union address to show he’s serious about the fight against global warming:

Say no to the Keystone XL pipeline. Without waiting for Congress the State Department can deny TransCanada’s request for permission to build a pipeline across the United States carrying toxic tar sand oil to polluting refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.

Regulate power plants. Since the Supreme Court ruled that greenhouse gases are pollutants in 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency has the power to put controls on carbon emissions. This means the EPA has tools to regulate new and existing power plants and industrial sources that are spewing methane, nitrous oxide and soot into the air.

Curb natural gas exports. The Department of Energy can reject licenses for oil and gas industry to expand their export of liquid natural gas to countries with which we don’t already have free trade agreements. And Obama could direct the U.S. Trade Representative to withdraw from negotiations on the TransPacific Partnership, which would fling the doors wide open to LNG export to countries in Asia.

Negotiate a global climate deal in good faith. Obama should instruct the climate team at the State Department to return to the negotiating table ready to compromise in order to reach international consensus for a strong and equitable 2015 climate treaty.

Obama doesn’t have to wait for Congress to act — and we don’t have to wait for Obama, either.

People have already started. They’re putting their bodies in the path of Keystone’s southern leg to halt construction. They’re closing down dirty power plants in the cities where they live and work, and meeting with neighbors to create plans to make their communities climate resilient. And thousands of people from around the country will gather in Washington, DC this weekend to call on Obama to push forward on climate in his second term.

Tonight, as Obama addresses the nation he’ll be laying the groundwork for his climate legacy. His comments will also shape how the growing majority of Americans who care about global warming perceive him — as a climate champion or an agent of politics as usual.

Europe has taken a bold leap forward to implement an innovative plan that could help protect people and the planet. Poised to set an example of climate leadership for the developed world, will countries like the United States come along?

At the end of January European Union finance ministers approved a proposal by eleven EU member states[1] to implement a coordinated financial transaction tax (FTT) — a tiny tax on trades of stocks, bonds, and derivatives. Through a process known as “enhanced cooperation,” this subset of EU countries (dubbed the EU11) was able to move forward with a common tax policy without having to include all 27 EU member states. The European Parliament gave the proposal a green light in December 2012, and the EU Council waved it forward at their meeting last month without a vote because of overwhelming support among member states.

EU tax commissioner and FTT proponent Algirdas Šemeta called it “a major milestone.”

The next step in making the FTT proposal a reality is for the eleven member states in the “coalition of the willing” to agree to details of the common tax. Negotiations are expected to wrap up and a formal agreement officially approved by the European Parliament in 2013.

The implications are potentially huge for climate finance. That’s the money that communities in developing countries need to make the transition from climate-vulnerable to climate-resilient, and from dirty energy development to low-carbon development.

The cost of that shift is measured in the hundreds of billions (some say trillions) of dollars. Rich industrialized countries have promised to deliver $100 billion a year by 2020. A fraction of what’s needed, but still a big lift compared to today’s levels of around $10 billion a year (if you count generously).

At the tax rate originally proposed by the EU Commission of a harmonized minimum 0.1 percent for stocks and bonds and 0.01 percent on derivatives, the EU11 FTT has the potential to raise up to €37 billion (nearly $50 billion in US dollars) every year.

France, which implemented a financial transaction tax in August 2012, has already made a commitment to direct 10 percent of the tax revenue to global public goods like development, health, and climate change (3.7 percent is destined for the Green Climate Fund). Members of Germany’s Social Democrat party have made general political murmurs that if they succeed in upcoming elections they will send revenue from an FTT to development to help meet the country’s 0.7 percent ODA goal.

Global campaigners are pushing the EU11 to be ambitious in targeting a significant portion of their FTT revenue to fight climate chaos. Members of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance used the recent 2012 global climate summit to call for the eleven countries to deposit 25 percent of the money raised into the Green Climate Fund. Representatives in the EU parliament and from developing countries are also calling for FTT revenue to be used by developed countries to meet their mid-term and long-term financing obligations.

With Timothy Geithner stepping down as Secretary of Treasury there’s renewed optimism that the Obama administration might support an FTT under Jack Lew’s leadership of the Department. Supporters of the tax are planning to raise the issue at Lew’s confirmation hearing in Washington DC tomorrow.

This would be a move that experts like Joseph Stiglitz endorse, who said, “as Mr. Obama’s second term begins, we must all face the fact that our country cannot quickly, meaningfully recover without policies that directly address inequality. What’s needed is… a more progressive tax system and a tax on financial speculation.”

An FTT that raises revenue for a fund that supports developing countries in dealing with the disproportionate impacts visited upon them by climate change is an important step in fighting global inequality. Here, the EU11 can be a global leader.

[1] The 11 EU member states that have entered into enhanced cooperation are Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia and Slovakia. Any other member state may join the enhanced cooperation if they wish.

From 1948 until 1962, it was possible for roughly one-quarter of the world’s population to migrate freely to the United Kingdom. In response to labor shortages resulting from high levels of death and disability inflicted upon two generations by two world wars, along with some geopolitical maneuvering in the face of strong anti-colonial movements, the British Nationality Act of 1948 enabled all residents of the British Commonwealth (consisting mostly of the then-current and former nations of the British Empire) to migrate to the UK without legal restrictions. In practice, this meant that British companies were free to seek out workers from throughout the Commonwealth. Additionally, the relatively tiny numbers of upwardly-mobile Commonwealth residents who were aware of this new opportunity and had the wherewithal to pursue it began migrating on their own to the UK.

It cannot be stated conclusively (and may be unlikely) that a continued open immigration policy would have prevented subsequent economic troubles, but the ensuing restrictions cannot have helped. In any case, taking the long view, the economic results have been good for the UK and good for the world. Besides the stimulus to to the United Kingdom (whose citizens were able to buy more of the world’s products and invest more heavily elsewhere), immigrants took pressure off of the markets for jobs and public goods in their home countries, and, much more importantly, sent (and continue to send) home financial remittances. More recently, immigrants commonly invest in businesses and other ventures in their countries of origin. All of this activity alleviates poverty and increases access to education, among other factors which contribute to the ongoing decline in fertility in most of the poorer countries of the world. Such is the immigrant experience around the world, and it only looks likely to replicate itself in more and more countries.

One important caveat must be made here, in that it is entirely possible for a country to have low fertility and high rates of unemployment -underemployment-poverty-etc. At the moment, this is true on both sides of the Mediterranean. Forgetting this would be succumbing to the “lump of labor” fallacy, in this case the mirror-image of complaining that immigrants “take” jobs from locals. The upshot of this is that, as labor shortages do inevitably develop in certain sectors of many economies, this will create more opportunities for people from areas with fertility above the job-creation capacity of the local market, and from areas that are simply stagnant for other reasons.

Speaking of xenophobia, nativist backlashes are a guaranteed sure thing, and the results can be ghastly. In any case, those who would prevent the movement of labor to fill vacancies are transparently on the wrong side of history. With prevention of cultural conflict in mind, look for governments to rush to broker bilateral deals with nations with cultural similarities (however tenuous), or, failing that, with societies that lack any particular seemingly irreconcilable differences. Specifically, look for European countries to look first towards the Philippines and parts of Latin America, before eventually turning elsewhere. Look for Bangladesh’s leaders to promote their population’s secularism, relatively tolerant atmosphere, and common use of English to lure recruiters. Look for China’s government to encourage its millions of surplus men to emigrate to nations with longstanding Chinese communities, even as China paradoxically is already suffering from labor shortages of its own.

Migration is one of the best mechanisms for reducing poverty, and the inexorable decline of global fertility rates will just as inexorably lead to more migration of the world’s people. As the pool of available labor gradually becomes dry, a world becoming gradually much wealthier (and producing less carbon!) will be in a far better position to deal with aging, shrinking populations, along with all the other problems feared by today’s chroniclers of falling fertility.

Scott Ryan Charney received an M.A. in U.S. Foreign Policy from American University.

At a donor conference in Kuwait last week addressing the ongoing humanitarian crisis unfolding in Syria, more than 1.5 billion dollars was pledged to aid Syrians affected by the conflict. UNHCR (the UN Refugee Agency), in conjunction with Mid-East countries hosting the onslaught of refugees, have been calling for donors to ward off an international disaster in the region.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates each pledged 300 million dollars to assist in funding efforts, alongside the total pledge of 300 million promised by the US and the EU. These pledges must materialize in coming weeks to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe. Will other countries step forward to provide assistance?

The mass exodus of refugees to countries such as Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, and even Egypt, shows no signs of relenting—in fact, the reverse is true—the numbers of refugees have ballooned in past weeks. Syrians fleeing violence, rape, and death are met with open arms by friendly neighboring countries, but the sheer number of refugees seeking safe haven is taking a toll on these countries.

In Jordan, for example, nearly 3 percent of its GDP has gone to addressing basic needs of the 340 thousand refugees living inside its borders—and supplies are running out. Jordan’s King Abdullah stated recently, “We have reached the end of the line, we have exhausted our resources.” With Jordan buckling under the economic strain of the situation, other countries need to step up to the plate.

A majority of refugees in the region are registered with UNHCR or are awaiting processing but many go undocumented in their haste to reach safety and also due to the lack of staff on the ground assisting in the process. The conflict, and resulting refugee problem, has created dire circumstances in many countries hosting Syrian refugees and this will only continue as long as Syria remains engulfed in conflict.

A Department of Justice memorandum leaked by NBC News has garnered considerable controversy this week, renewing the ongoing discussion over the legality—and morality—of the Obama administration’s targeted killing program. The disclosure comes as John Brennan goes before the Senate as President Obama’s nominee to head the CIA.

The sixteen-page legal memo—a white paper composed by the DOJ for Congress—outlines the supposedly “lawful” justifications for the targeted killing of U.S. citizens: reasons which, as many commentators have observed, are disturbingly vague. The memo states that first, the citizen must be a senior member of Al-Qaeda; second, that this person must pose an “imminent threat” to the U.S.; and third, that the capture of the individual in question must be “infeasible.”

The most vital fact to note about this memorandum is that it is not purporting to impose requirements on the president’s power to assassinate US citizens. When it concludes that the president has the authority to assassinate “a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaida” who “poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the US” where capture is “infeasible”, it is not concluding that assassinations are permissible only in those circumstances.

Peter Grier of the Christian Science Monitor elaborates on this problem:

All that’s required, under the memo’s wording, is for a well-informed top official of the US government to decide that the person in question is a top terrorist. As for “imminent,” that does not mean “about to happen” in this case. It means only that the alleged terrorist must have recently been involved in activities posing a threat of violent attack and that there is no evidence they’ve renounced those activities.

Other criticisms of the memo have primarily repeated the unlawful and immoral nature of the drone strike program in general, namely that there is no judicial process involved for the target; that the president acts as judge, jury, and executioner in this matter; that such strikes completely violate sovereignty and international law; and that the very notion of drone strike killings, for many of the reasons above, is forthrightly unconstitutional.

Essentially, as Juan Cole explains on his blog Informed Consent, the president derives the power for the drone strike program from a 2001 legislative act, specifically the Congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF.) However, Cole asserts that this act fits the description of a “bill of attainder,” which is a “legislative act that singled out one or more persons and imposed punishment on them, without benefit of trial.” The framers of the Constitution rather smartly decided to forbid bills of attainder for this very reason in Article I, Section 9, paragraph three of the Constitution, which states, “No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law will be passed.”

Thus, the AUMF “in singling out all members of al-Qaeda wherever they are and regardless of nationality or of actual criminal action, as objects of legitimate lethal force,” Cole explains, makes it precisely a bill of attainder—and therefore, explicitly unconstitutional.

The leaked memo, in the very least, has placed more public pressure on the Obama administration to address the drone strike program transparently, an issue it has so far avoided or ignored. Yet the administration cannot hope to conceal the program indefinitely: already, the United Nations is conducting an inquiry into both the U.S. and U.K. drone programs, and—since the release of the leaked DOJ memo—President Obama’s nominee for the CIA director, John Brennan, will likely be grilled on the subject as well in his confirmation hearing.

One can only hope that holding the administration’s feet to the fire on this issue will prompt meaningful, lawful change to the drone strike program—yet the United States’ poor track record of respecting the judicial process and international law perhaps makes such expectations altogether too optimistic to hold.

The Washington Post, among “several” other unnamed news outlets, has reportedly known of a US airstrip in Saudi Arabia that, aside from the apparent distinction of being the first new US base opened on Saudi soil since the 2003 troop withdrawals, was the airstrip that participated in the 2011 raid(s) that killed Anwar al-Awlaki.

According to the Post, it and those outlets have sat on the information for a year at the administration’s request for fear it would jeopardize the base’s security and the secrecy of US combat operations in Yemen, which are also supported by the Saudi Air Force. It is also notable that the US has set up this while still retaining its heaviest aerial assets (which are reserved for contingencies against the Islamic Republic of Iran) in the region in Qatar, so this is solely an anti-AQAP program that’s been set up.

One of the outlets — not the Post — was going to break the self-observed gag order on the basing details, so the details have begun to emerge, which for presumptive CIA Director John Brennan is hardly pleasant news since his Senate confirmation hearings have begun and there is much talk of him throwing a wet towel on the campaign. However, as Matt Appuzo points out, this is not the first we’ve heard of this base. “In addition to Seychelles and Ethiopia, the senior U.S. military official said the United States got permission to fly armed drones from Djibouti, and confirmed the construction of a new airstrip in Saudi Arabia” was what Fox News reported in 2011, citing a Washington Post report on the expansion of drone efforts worldwide, though the remarks quoted above came from Fox’s own source.

Considering how contentious US basing in the Kingdom was when it began in the 1990s (and, we thought, largely came to an end in the 2000s except for the two military training/modernization programs run for the Saudi military and National Guard), one really has to marvel at how this White House earned the accolade of “transparency” in its first term with actions such as these. It’s worth noting that while detailed explanations — but not material evidence or witnesses — have been offered for targeting him as an active AQAP member, there have been no such specifics with regards to the death of his 16-year old son, Abdulrahman, who was killed in an operation against another target few days later — though unlike his father, he had not been deliberately targeted (the operation was targeting an Egyptian national). Bad parenting has even been offered as an explanation — well, justification — by one official for the son’s death once it became clear he was a minor and therefore not subject to the “signature strikes” that treat all adult males in the targeted areas as militant until proven innocent. (NB: Brennan convinced Obama to maintain this policy and have the CIA “tighten its targeting standards,” according to the Daily Beast.)

But if we are talking in terms of leaks, then yes, this has been a very “Sunshine Week” for the Administration. Since I’m on the subject of drones — though as Gregory D. Johnson points out drones are not the only weapons the US deploys in the Yemeni and Pakistani highlands — there have been some important new stories out about the US’s national counterterrorism strategy here in the Middle East:

1. The black sites legacy of the Bush Administration detailed in a new OSI report, though as OSI itself notes, “it appears that the Obama administration did not end extraordinary rendition,” though it has been much-scaled back. Both Eli Lake and Jeremy Scahill have been to Somalia in the past two years to report on these alleged CIA black sites and the local prisons that feed into them. However, it is clear that the administration has shied away from the sites in favor of drone operations.

2. Not a leak, but Micah Zenko’s discussion of outgoing SecDef Leon Panetta’s recent remarks on drones is still illuminating into the debate that goes on at these levels.

3. A leaked white paper released by NBC’s Michael Isikoff — perhaps from a White House source not happy with John Brennan (finally) moving (back) to the CIA in Obama’s second term? — that providers more detail on the speeches given by Brennan and others about the criteria for putting people, including US citizens, in the sights. Again, this isn’t the official policy document, but as a white paper signed off on by lawyers within the Administration, it is as good as we are going to get bar the Times or the Post releasing audiotape of a “Terror Tuesday” briefing. Glenn Greenwald details the implications in greater detail here.

The results weren’t nearly as dire as many predicted. The Israeli elections last month didn’t bring about a complete victory for the far right (and Israel’s far-right is very far indeed!). Right-wing prime minister Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s Likud Party, in alliance with the right-wing extremist Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is Our Home) party, lost at least 10 seats.

The biggest victor was the new centrist party Yesh Atid, led by charismatic television personality Yair Lapid. He ran on the basis of personality and a claim to represent Israel’s middle-class interests, from the price of cheese to affordable housing to his most popular call, for “sharing the burden”—a euphemism for drafting ultra-Orthodox young Jewish Israelis into the military. Israeli commentators described the new Knesset as divided almost down the middle between center-right and center-left blocs.

That’s all good. But. The campaign was waged virtually entirely on economic and social issues affecting the 80 percent Jewish population of Israel; the needs of the 20 percent of Israeli citizens who are Palestinians were largely ignored. Israel’s continuing occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the besieged Gaza Strip were off the agenda, let alone its violations of international law and human rights. On the question of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the elections represented a clear victory for Israel’s status quo: the occupation will be left in place.

Read the rest of this article on Yes! Magazine’s website. Yes! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions, published it on February 6, 2013.

The Senate must pass the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, an international agreement that affirms principles of human rights and equality for women everywhere.

This year I came up with the best Valentine’s Day gift ever for my wife and daughter. It’s inexpensive and, unlike a bouquet of flowers, should last beyond their lifetimes. They’ll love it! I can’t think of a better way to express how much I love them.

Rather than chocolates or jewelry, I am going to join a One Billion Rising rally to end the violence against women that has shattered lives and torn the fabric of societies around the world.

A billion women — one out of every three on the planet — will be raped or beaten sometime in their lifetime. That’s one billion moms, sisters, daughters, and friends violated, one billion lives shattered, one billion hearts broken, and one billion reasons to rise up and put an end to this violence.

On February 14, rallies around the world are giving a billion women, and those who love them, an opportunity to dance, speak out, and say, “Enough!” There are many ways to make a difference, but here in the United States we have a 32-year-old obligation that I’m focused on: Senate passage of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.

This landmark international agreement affirms principles of fundamental human rights and equality for women around the world, including the rights not to be raped or beaten. But ours is one of only seven countries — including Iran, Sudan, and Somalia —that haven’t ratified this treaty.

This accord offers countries a practical blueprint to achieve progress for women and girls by calling on each ratifying country to overcome barriers of discrimination. Around the world it has been used to reduce sex trafficking and domestic abuse, provide access to education and vocational training, guarantee the right to vote, ensure the ability to work and own a business without discrimination, improve maternal health care, end forced marriage and child marriage, and ensure inheritance rights.

Although the Obama administration strongly supports its ratification and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has voted in favor of it twice with bipartisan support (in 1994 and 2002), it has never been brought to the Senate floor for a vote. It’s time to change that.

Why? Joining this convention would continue our nation’s proud bipartisan tradition of promoting and protecting human rights. Ratification requires two-thirds of the Senate to stand together. The good news is that in this time of tight budgets, it would cost us absolutely nothing.

Ratifying it would strengthen the United States as a global leader in standing up for women and girls around the world. Unfortunately today, our diplomats who speak out to end violence against women are too often told that since we are not part of the women’s treaty, we should mind our own business. Under the leadership of Presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, we ratified similar treaties on genocide, torture, and race.

Finally, bringing it to a full Senate vote would open up important conversations. While American women enjoy opportunities and status not available to most of the world’s women, few would dispute that more progress is needed. A Senate vote would provide an opportunity for a national dialogue on how to address persistent gaps in women’s full equality regarding closing the pay gap, reducing domestic violence, and stopping human trafficking.

This is something that I know my wife and daughter would love. So I’m speaking out to end violence against women. It will be the very best Valentine’s Day gift ever.